Place your wager: Biggest upsets in Super Bowl history

Thanks to another couple of NFL playoff games that went down to the wire, we now know who is going to be in the Super Bowl after the Cincinnati Bengals defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship, where they'll face the Los Angeles Rams, which defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship. Also, for the second season in a row, one of the teams will play in its home stadium.

Cincinnati was going to be the underdog either way, but there is definitely an advantage for the Rams playing in L.A. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were small underdogs last season before beating the Chiefs somewhat easily at Raymond James Stadium. 

If the Bengals pull the upset, it would certainly be pretty significant given the situation, but at +4 this is a game that the oddsmakers are telling us is actually pretty even in terms of the talent on the field. Assuming a pretty standard three-point home-field advantage, it looks like the location of the game might have swung things pretty significantly. Maybe it would not be that big of an upset overall if the Bengals actually win the Super Bowl, something they have never done in their long history. 

Super Bowl Upsets Through the Ages

The history of the Super Bowl is littered with upsets, however. Let's take a look at some that stand out. 

The greatest upset in Super Bowl history in terms of point spread is from 1969 when Joe Namath led the Jets to a 16-7 to their famous victory over the Colts. The Jets were -18 and won that game outright. Since then we have seen only one spread at that level or higher. In 1995 the San Francisco 49ers were -18.5 and beat the Chargers by 23 points.

If you are looking for the greatest upset of all time regardless of spread, you can definitely make a case for the Giants' win over the Patriots in 2008. New England was perfect during the regular season that year and was -12.5 before losing 17-14 to New York. That is the last time Super Bowl saw a double-digit spread, too, in case you were wondering. 

Go back a little further to 2002 and you see that the Rams were -14. This time it was the Patriots that engineered the upset, essentially starting their dynastic run. Who knows, maybe if they get walloped in the Super Bowl like they were expected to, the last 20 years of NFL history look a lot different. 

Another upset that probably does not get its due is the Broncos' win in 1999. The narrative that year was how future Hall of Famer John Elway finally got his first Super Bowl ring after so many painful playoff defeats. I have no quarrel with the storyline, but I think it gets lost that the Broncos won as an 11-point underdog in that game against a Green Bay team that won the Super Bowl the year before by 14 points (a push against the number).

That Denver win was the last of five straight Super Bowls where the favorite was expected to win by double digits. (Four of them did just that.) Since then only two Super Bowls have had favorites of more than 10 points, and both times the favorite wound up losing outright. You can bet the oddsmakers are well aware of that history as they make the lines every year since.  

In terms of this season and the Bengals vs. the Rams, Cincinnati has already generated two upsets in the playoffs, knocking off Tennessee and Kansas City. The Bengals were an underdog in 11 games this season, which might be a record for a Super Bowl participant, and in those games, they are 7-4 straight up and 8-3 against the spread. They might be a great bet to be the next upset winner.